Historically, an application's accumulated data was directly stored as named files on the local disks of the application computers. These files were stored in directories belonging to file hierarchies installed on the local disks. Now applications and storage need not reside on the same disks, nor on the same computer.
Moreover, historical naming conventions are not necessary any more, nor is it required to store files in directories. Files could be indexed with numbers (keys) in a database and an application with a specific connector (for example, using HTTP—Hypertext Transfer Protocol or any other suitable protocols) could fetch files directly to/from a key/value store.
The historical concept of a named file is no longer necessary for an application to access its accumulated data and this abstraction creates unnecessary overhead as handling a hierarchy of billions of files and folders proves to be complex.